Chapter X: Part 10

THURSDAY, MARCH 13.—This morning Mr. Atterbury found it necessary to go twenty miles into the country, to look at a farm, and took us with him. R. A. Davis, government horticulturist for South Africa, also accepted an invitation to go. Mr. Davis was born in England, but spent several years in California; he says he learned all he knows about horticulture in California, as that state is undoubtedly headquarters for horticultural information. In his way, he is as noted an expert as our F. D. Coburn, and it was a privilege to spend several hours in the country with him. Here is a South-African apple story I had direct from Mr. Davis. His son has an apple orchard of three acres, containing three hundred trees ten years old. Last year the younger Mr. Davis sold his apples for ten thousand dollars, or more than $3,000 an acre. These figures are gross; the cost of picking and marketing the fruit was fifteen per cent. We had two punctures during the ride, and Mr. Davis told me another big South-African story while the driver made repairs. The most prosperous farming country in the world is the ostrich district in Cape Colony; instead of owning one automobile, as do our successful corn and wheat farmers, the ostrich farmers own two and three automobiles each. The best ostrich country is known as the Oudtshoorn district, and is probably 70×60 miles in extent. Mr. Davis told of one irrigated farm of four hundred acres and 1,800 birds for which an offer of $560,000 was lately refused. The ostrich farmers are nearly all Boers, although many Jews live in the district to trade in the feathers. It is said that more than one hundred of the farmers in the bird district are worth more than $250,000 each. Alfalfa is grown extensively. One acre of alfalfa will graze five ostriches, and the average ostrich will annually produce feathers worth $25. Ostriches are raised in California and elsewhere, but conditions for ostrich farming are nearest perfection in South Africa. A good many ostriches run wild in Africa, but feathers from the wild birds are not good. Ostrich eggs or living birds cannot be taken out of South Africa, and some growers have fancy strains of birds that are worth from $2,000 to $2,500 per pair. One South-African ostrich king has devoted so much time to ostriches, and lived among them so long, that both Mr. Davis and Mr. Atterbury agreed that he had grown to look like an ostrich.... Mr. Davis says South Africa is a better fruit country than California, and that it will produce better oranges with less effort.... The two punctures caused us to be late, and Mr. Atterbury’s automobile driver, whom he called Bristow, fairly flew over the ground. I sat on the back seat with Mr. Atterbury and Mr. Davis, while Adelaide rode in front with the driver. Mr. Atterbury frequently tapped Bristow on the back with his cane, and said: “Too fast!” and Bristow slowed up for a time, but in a few minutes would be running faster than ever. The South-African roads are naturally good, as they are in western Kansas. Our road lay along the railway, and every mile or two there was a stone block-house, erected by the English during the Boer war, for the protection of the railroad. This line of block-houses extends from Capetown to a point four hundred miles beyond Johannesburg, a distance of something like fourteen hundred miles. The Boer war almost ruined South Africa, and resulted in the death of 25,000 English soldiers, and probably 4,000 Boer soldiers. In the concentration camps of the English, it is said 22,000 Boer women and children died, because of conditions which resembled the conditions under Weyler in Cuba. England spent millions and almost billions in the war; yet it was brought on by a handful of alien Jews. War is the most wicked, senseless thing men engage in.... No one disputes that the Boers were terrible fighters. Mr. Davis recalled a limerick composed by an English soldier during the war. It ran in this way: “There was an old Boer who hid in a trench with a bullet-proof lid. And when the English came nigh, he said with a sigh, ‘I can bag the whole lot’—and he did.”... South Africa does not encourage immigration. The Boers are in control, and they do not want new-comers, since they know that the immigrants must come mainly from England, and that every immigrant means another vote against them.... Mr. Davis told me that New Zealanders are much more popular in England than Australians; the Australians have entirely too much admiration for the United States to suit England.... The flower we call cosmos grows wild here; we saw many acres in full bloom.... Wherever we have been in South Africa, evidences of prosperity are abundant. The country is growing rapidly, and every man who can afford it is buying a piece of land with a view of putting out an orchard. Almost in sight of Johannesburg, good fruit land may be bought for $25 an acre. I make this statement on the authority of Mr. Atterbury, a practical real-estate man.... Possibly you think of the Boer farmers of South Africa as hard-working men. As a matter of fact, they are all gentlemen farmers; they do not go into the fields, and do hard manual labor, as do our farmers—no one works here except the negroes. Mr. Atterbury often goes into the country to look at land, and says he usually finds the Boer farmers sitting around the house, talking with the neighbors. Occasionally they go out into their fields, to see that the negroes are working properly, but they are above manual labor. During the morning, we met a good many Boer farmers with ox teams of from three to a dozen span; but the farmers always rode in the wagons, while their negroes walked and drove. In working ox teams here, a negro boy always walks ahead, and leads the head span, while two negro men walk behind, and use whips.... We returned to Johannesburg at 2 P. M., undecided whether to call the driver “Bristow, the Aviator,” or “Flying Bristow.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 14.—Yesterday evening, in company with Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury, we left Johannesburg for Pretoria, capital of the Transvaal and of the South-African United States. The distance is thirty-eight miles, and the road good. Flying Bristow made the trip in an hour and three minutes. Thirty-eight miles an hour in an automobile does not sound very fast, but ride it over country roads in South Africa, and you will agree that it is a terrific pace. I never before traveled at such a speed in an automobile. There are many hills on the way to Pretoria, and Flying Bristow crept up these, as the Atterbury machine is not a good hill-climber. It is a Talbott, made in England, and during the past two years has traveled 40,000 miles in attending to the affairs of the African Realty Trust, of which Mr. Atterbury is general manager. On a level, and down the hills, I have no doubt we traveled fifty miles an hour yesterday afternoon. Mrs. Atterbury rode in front, but had no more influence with Bristow than has her husband. When we stepped out of the machine at Pretoria, I remarked to Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury that we had just had a very speedy ride, whereupon Flying Bristow smilingly said that Mr. Schlessinger, his other employer, would consider our pace a slow one. So Mr. Schlessinger seems to be responsible for Flying Bristow. And if Mr. Schlessinger doesn’t look out, he won’t live to see his five institutions take a high place in South-African finance, for Bristow undoubtedly drives too fast. He has never had an accident, but one is coming to him, and I sincerely hope that when it arrives, neither Mr. Atterbury nor Mr. Schlessinger will be in the machine.... Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury spent a good many months in Pretoria during the Boer war; part of the time Mr. Atterbury was American consul. On one occasion the English shelled the Boer forts nearly all day, and every shell passed over the Atterbury home; one exploding shell broke a window in the American consulate. Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury say that a shell, in passing high above you, shrieks and screams like a living thing in distress. They know Pretoria as well as you know the town in which you live, so that we had excellent guides in our visit to the capital.... I had a room on the second floor of the Grand Hotel, facing the old Boer capital just across the street. During the war, President Krueger (Oom Paul) and members of the war board met daily in a room just opposite my room; people used to sit on the hotel veranda and watch the war board in session. We visited the modest home of President Krueger this morning, and the care-taker showed us over the one-story house. In one of the nine rooms is displayed three hundred bouquets of immortelles sent to Oom Paul’s funeral. A few of the bouquets were made of solid silver, and a few of beads; in addition to these, many of which were sent by kings and princes, three hundred bouquets of perishable flowers were sent. Oom Paul (Uncle Paul) died in Switzerland, having been compelled to leave his country during the war, but his body is buried in Pretoria. Mrs. Krueger died in the house we visited. She was a plain old woman, the wife of a farmer, and refused to go to Holland or Switzerland when it seemed impossible to prevent Pretoria falling into the hands of the British. Not only Lord Roberts, but Lord Kitchener, were compelled to come to South Africa and take personal charge of the campaign against the Boers. Mr. and Mrs. Atterbury saw Lord Roberts ride into Pretoria at the head of his troops. Across the street from Oom Paul’s residence is the church where he often preached, for he hated the devil almost as much as he hated the English.... The Boers were wonderful soldiers, and, being in their own country, they had a great advantage over the English. When they captured English prisoners, they didn’t know what to do with them, so turned them loose. It is related that General DeWett captured a certain English regiment three times, and this fact caused that particular regiment to be known as “DeWett’s Own.”... Pretoria has 65,000 people, and is a beautiful city. A new capitol building is approaching completion, at a cost, everything counted, of nearly ten million dollars. It is an enormous and beautiful structure of marble and granite, situated on a hill overlooking the city. The erection of this building is bitterly resented by the English as a useless waste of money, but the Boers are in control of the government, and for sentimental reasons insist upon this enormous structure at Pretoria, Oom Paul’s late capital. An Englishman told me lately that the Pretoria capitol will cost two-thirds as much as Westminster, the seat of the English parliament.... I speak of Pretoria as the capital of the United States of South Africa. As a matter of fact, it is only the administrative capital, as the South-African congress meets at Capetown, while the South-African supreme court sits at Bloemfontein. The capital is thus divided between three cities. Our Washington is the capital of one hundred million people, whereas there are only eight million in all South Africa: one million whites, and seven million colored. The United States has nearly twice as many negroes as South Africa.... I am told that the average negro here does not pay much attention to liberty and the pursuit of happiness; he takes whatever is offered him and says nothing, but the negroes of the Basuto tribe are disposed to criticise English methods. The Basutos are well armed, and it is said could put an army of twenty thousand horsemen in the field on a few days’ notice. It is the Basutos who are expected to finally make the English trouble, and, when they begin, they may have the assistance of many other negroes, and the sympathy of the Boers.... When the Boers of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State fought the English, it is well known that they expected the assistance of the Cape Colony Dutch; but the Cape Colony Dutch, who are very numerous and very rich, got cold feet, and failed to show up at the first battle. But for the promise of the Cape Colony Dutch to join, there would have been no Boer war; and had they joined, the war would still be going on.... On our way to Pretoria, we passed a big camp of English soldiers. All English soldiers will shortly be removed from South Africa, the country being so peaceful that they are no longer needed. We also passed over one of the battlefields of the Boer war, which is now a peaceful pasture devoted to cattle.... A son of Wm. E. Gladstone is governor-general of South Africa, and lives in Pretoria.... Pretoria has the finest zoölogical garden in South Africa. It was established by the Boers, and has since been fostered and improved by the English. It contains a rhinoceros, and the animal is so tame that the children feed it. But how viciously these animals charged Colonel Roosevelt in his articles in Scribner’s Magazine!... The zoo is not only interesting because of its rare animals, but is located in one of the handsomest flower gardens I have ever seen. Next door is a museum containing many South-African curios.... At 2:30 in the afternoon we left Pretoria in a drizzling rain, which continued all the way to Johannesburg. Owing to slippery roads and no chains, Flying Bristow did not reach Johannesburg until about 4 o’clock.

SATURDAY, MARCH 15.—This evening we were guests at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mark Cary, both formerly of California. They employ four native servants, all Zulus. Seven years ago, they were in Durban for some time, and a Zulu boy named Abel became attached to Mr. Cary. Soon after their return to Johannesburg, there was a knock at their kitchen door. Mr. Cary opened the door, and there stood Abel.

“Your Durban boy has come to work for you,” Abel said.

And he has been with the Carys ever since, as cook. He receives $22 a month, having become an expert. Abel lives with the other servants in a detached house in the yard, and each receives the following rations: A half-loaf of bread per day; one can condensed milk per week; one quarter-pound of tea per week; two pounds of sugar per week; two pounds of corn-meal per week; fresh meat once a week. This meat consists of a shilling’s worth of “boy’s meat,” probably a pound and a half of beef, which is boiled with vegetables, usually carrots, which the Zulus love. The black servants here are known as “boys,” and the butchers sell a special kind of meat for them, which is called “boy’s meat.” Mrs. Cary serves out the servants’ rations once a week, and her grocer puts up the tea in quarter-pound packages, the sugar in two-pound packages, etc. The food is cooked in Mrs. Cary’s kitchen, but eaten in the detached house where the servants live.... While we were at the dinner table I expressed a desire to see Abel, the cook, and Mrs. Cary sent for him by Sampson, the waiter. Abel came, bowing and smiling, into the room, remained a few moments, and then disappeared in confusion. He is a single man, about thirty years old, and is now saving up his money to get married.... Sampson, the waiter, is a black man of about the same age, and has been married some time. He gave fifteen cows for his wife. She lives somewhere in Zululand, and Sampson sees her only once a year. Among the Zulus, a family of girls is valuable, as the father can always sell them at a good price. Sampson is one of the most capable waiters I have ever seen at a private dinner, or at a dinner of any other kind. He is very quiet in his movements, and, when he offers anything to the guests, he stands at a very respectful distance. While idle, and standing behind his mistress, he looks so respectful, and so concerned about the dinner, that all guests must admire him as much as I did. When I saw him, he wore a suit of white duck, made in American fashion. In addition to waiting on the table, Sampson does the washing and ironing, and assists the garden boy in caring for the flowers, the vegetables and the chickens. At the usual private dinner, you observe the lady of the house keeping a sharp eye on the waiter, although apparently engaging freely in conversation, but Sampson was so capable that Mrs. Cary was not at all nervous. When I am a guest at a private dinner, it makes me feel more natural and at home to see things go wrong occasionally, but Abel and Sampson did such excellent team work that there was not the slightest friction to comfort me.... The Cary servants are kept busy constantly, and they will cheerfully work until eleven o’clock at night, if necessary. They are entitled to a vacation of ten days every year, but Abel, the cook, has been away but once in six years. Every time they leave the house they must have a pass, certifying that they are good boys, regularly employed, etc. Every negro you see on the streets of Johannesburg has a pass; otherwise he is liable to arrest. The blacks pay two shillings a month to the government for this pass privilege, and when a white man employs a new servant from the country, he must have him registered at the office of the police. Mrs. Cary says her negro boys particularly dislike nagging; and I think this is a characteristic of every human male, white, black, red or yellow, that ever drew the breath of life.... Mr. Cary has in his employ a negro man who has six wives. This man works in Mr. Cary’s office down-town, but lives with the other servants at the Cary home. He says he often whips his wives, on general principles. He cheerfully takes orders from Mr. Cary, but it humiliates him to take orders from Mrs. Cary; having six wives of his own, it irritates him to be ordered around by a woman.... Sampson, the waiter, does the sweeping and scrubbing in the Cary home, but the beds are made and looked after by a white maid. Mrs. Cary has a very handsome flower garden, and a special boy is regularly employed to look after it. As it is in bloom summer and winter, he is kept very busy, even with the occasional assistance of Sampson. The Carys have an automobile, but the driver is a white man; blacks are not allowed to run automobiles here.... It is related that the negroes were once greatly excited in Johannesburg over a rumor of a Kaffir uprising. One woman said to her black boy:

“You wouldn’t kill your missus, would you?”

“Oh, no,” the boy replied; “boy next door kill you, and I kill his missus.”

The affair, it seemed, had all been arranged, and very delicately at that. This boy’s name was “Machinery.” The blacks take any name they hear used among the whites, and “Machinery” is a very common name in Johannesburg.... At the Cary home, when I was there, domestic ducks, baked, were a part of the dinner. A considerable quantity was left after all had been served.

“Will you get what is left over?” I asked Mrs. Cary.

“You bet I will,” she laughingly replied, using an American expression to amuse the American guests. With our black servants at home, they always get what is left over from a dinner, but in a South-African home, the servants get only what is served out to them at the beginning of every week.... Everywhere in America, women believe that there is nothing better for a salad than a whole tomato on lettuce leaves, and Durkee’s yellow dressing poured over the tomato. Mrs. Cary had it, except that Abel made the dressing. We also had apple pie, and Abel’s crust, made of beef suet and butter, would have done credit to any cook.... Mrs. Cary says that when she announced her engagement to a man in South Africa, all her friends inquired:

“Is he a missionary?”

People at home have a vague notion that all the whites in South Africa are missionaries, but I have seen none, and heard little of their operations.... We went to the Cary home in a rain-storm, and it was still raining when we returned to the hotel at 10 o’clock at night. Four years ago, rain fell here forty-two days and nights, according to citizens of Johannesburg. This, it seems to me, breaks the record by two days. The rain here is very erratic, and usually falls at the wrong time. The rainfall for the past twenty years has averaged twenty-six inches, but the rainfall is nine inches short this season.... The rain continues at Durban, and when the warship “New Zealand” left for Australia late this afternoon, there was a downpour of rain, and the crowd on the docks was therefore small.... Four years ago, on the 17th of August, ten inches of snow, the first ever seen here, fell in Johannesburg, and all business was suspended while the people engaged in snowballing.

SUNDAY, MARCH 16.—This afternoon I attended a baseball game in Johannesburg; a deciding game between clubs which had won six games each. The players were nearly all miners from California and Colorado. There were probably seven hundred spectators present, and although most of them were Americans, only one of them wore an American hat. I was the one exception, and some were disposed to guy that when I passed in front of the grandstand. The hat generally worn by the men here is a fuzzy affair made in London, and many of them are of a greenish color. The hat can be wrapped up and put in a traveling-bag, and is generally worn with the brim turned down all the way ‘round. A great many caps are also worn.... The game was exactly like a very good amateur game in the United States, except that several of the players were elderly. One player, a doctor, was as old and fat as I am, and I’m in no condition to play baseball. I was told that this doctor is the enthusiast who keeps the game going in Johannesburg. Two of the grayheads were about the best players in the game; one of them was a man named Wilson, and he was a noted base-stealer. One player was called “Denver.” “Come to life, Denver,” a spectator cried, when he went to bat, and “Denver” didn’t do a thing but smash the ball on the nose for a home run. Another player was called “C. C.,” and I found that his nickname was “Cripple Creek,” the name of the American mining camp he came from. One of the pitchers was called “Texas,” and he won the game, 6 to 4. American baseball slang was constantly coming from the spectators, and I could have easily imagined myself in an American town had the men present worn different hats. I looked over the audience a good many times, and it seemed that every man present had in some way lost a little of his American identity. In the chaffing from the grandstand, English pronunciations could be detected, though every man around me was probably an American.... An unusual feature of the game was that almost no boys were present. When a foul went over the fence, some one would remark: “Another boy in,” but the only baseball enthusiasts here are grown men who have played the game, or seen fine exhibitions of it, in the United States. No admission was charged, but a man took up a collection to pay expenses, just as is done at games in the smaller country towns of the United States.... We ate lunch today with an American family, and they told us that the most famous girls’ school in South Africa is at Wellington, Cape Colony. It is run by two American women, and most of the better class girls in South Africa are educated there. All the teachers are American women, and the result is that all the students acquire many American ways, habits and pronunciations. It is generally said here that this Wellington school is doing more to Americanize South Africa than any other single influence.... American life insurance men stand very high all over the world. A South-African life insurance man told me today that every new feature of foreign companies is borrowed from America.... Possibly you will remember that years ago, Prince Napoleon, a son of the Empress Eugenie, was killed by savages. This occurred in Natal, of which Durban is the seaport. The young prince came out here with an English regiment, in a spirit of adventure. The Zulus cut this regiment to pieces; the catastrophe was almost as complete as was the Custer massacre on the Little Big Horn river, in Montana, in 1876.... The original Dutch who settled in South Africa were the same sort of people who settled in New York, and called the place New Amsterdam. The settlement of the Dutch in Cape Colony and in New York occurred at about the same time.... The word “Boer” means farmer, but it is applied to all descendants of the old Dutch stock.... American residents here greatly regret the exaggerated scandals constantly appearing in American papers. In America, a decent man is often abused unjustly and untruthfully, whereas in England the great scandals with plenty of foundation, are usually hushed up. The newspapers and magazines of England and its colonies are not as independent as the American press, and more generally owned by “the interests.” This statement will, I believe, be generally admitted by the English. The American press is not only free; it often carries freedom too far, and prints unjust and untruthful criticisms. These publications are read by Englishmen, and Americans living abroad never hear the last of them.... The tea habit being general in the English colonies, there are a great many tea-rooms. One was raided in Johannesburg last night, and a large number of arrests made. Think of a tea-room being raided by the police!... But here is something still more unusual: An Episcopal rector in Capetown attempted to introduce High Mass into his services, and the controversy has reached the newspapers. The vestrymen are against High Mass, but the pastor stands firm, and says he is within his rights.

MONDAY, MARCH 17.—We have spent this day in the old Dutch town of Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State in the days before the Boer war. It has thirty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half of them negroes. Polly’s Hotel Cecil, where we are staying, is very comfortable, and the price is only $3 a day. I came to the Hotel Cecil on the recommendation of a Boer lawyer I met on the train. He lives somewhere in the interior, and is here to attend a sitting of the supreme court. The lawyer is the first Boer I have become acquainted with; he was a Boer soldier during the war, and, being taken prisoner, was sent to India, where he remained eighteen months. The Orange Free State had no grievance against the English, but went to war because it had a defensive alliance with the Transvaal. Although Oom Paul is a famous figure in history, he was quarrelsome and unreasonable; he made many demands of the English that a proud people could not decently grant. But when the war began, the Orange Free State became the centre of hostilities, and all the men between the ages of seventeen and seventy were drafted. The English couldn’t afford to lose, and they burned houses and destroyed fields as ruthlessly as did Sheridan in the Shenandoah valley. It was a terrible affair, but Oom Paul, with his excess of piety and patriotism, undoubtedly dragged an unwilling people to the slaughter. President Steyn was not as well known as President Krueger, but he was a better man, and better balanced. Steyn, who is still living here, but in ill-health, is a highly educated man, whereas Krueger could barely write his own name.... Owing to Easter, the railroads are now selling tickets at half-fare, so that we traveled here for two cents a mile each. This is the regular fare in Kansas, where we are not blessed, or cursed, with government-owned railways.... The Orange Free State, formerly a republic, is now a state in the South-African union. It has seventeen members of parliament, and sixteen of them are Boers. The seventeenth is a Boer, but a supporter of all English measures. Some of the sixteen Boer members are sons of English fathers, so that it will be seen that politics makes strange bedfellows in South Africa, too.... A Boer farmer does not pay his negro farm hand to exceed $2.50 a month. In addition, the farm hand receives enough corn-meal to keep him, and such other food as he can pick up. Corn-meal is the staple food on the farms here, for Boers as well as negroes. The Boers are always expressing indignation because the English are spoiling the negroes by paying them big wages. The Englishman who drove us about this morning in a Ford automobile, at $2.50 an hour, pays a negro man $10 a month, and the negro boards himself. Such liberality as this greatly irritates the Boers. And this town negro has almost nothing to do; he only cares for six horses, two carriages and an automobile. The Englishman who drove the automobile talked all the time, and his talk was mainly abuse of the Boers.... I have frequently remarked that the English are very unreliable in their pronunciations. Some of them refer to a horse as a ’orse, while others pronounce the word as we do. In London, there is a famous place, the Hotel Cecil. It is universally called the Hotel Sessil in London, but in Bloemfontein, the capital of an English colony, there is a hotel of the same name, and it is called Hotel Cecil; the word pronounced as it is spelled.... I don’t know how it is generally, but on Monday, March 17, 1913, Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa, was the dullest town I have ever visited. The handsome stores were empty, and I wondered that the merchants did not close up. In dull towns, pretty women are always numerous, and we saw more pretty women in Bloemfontein than in any other town in South Africa.... I believe I have frequently remarked in these letters that South Africa is the laziest country in the world for white people. Today I saw a negro driving a public carriage. Beside him sat a white man, who collected the fares, and managed things; but the white man would not consent to do the actual work of driving. When a white mechanic accepts a job here, he asks, “Where are the boys?” meaning, “Where are the negroes to do the work under my direction?” The labor problem has solved itself in South Africa. When a tolerably good man will work for thirty-seven cents a day, and board himself, an employer really has no room for complaint.... In Bloemfontein, negro women are employed as chambermaids at our hotel; elsewhere we have seen only chamber-men, who worked under the direction of white maids. The negro men are more industrious in South Africa than the women, now that they are civilized, but in the old days of savagery, the women did most of the work.... Near Bloemfontein is a fort large enough to accommodate four thousand English soldiers, but the place is almost deserted; England no longer fears war in South Africa.... The window in my room looks into an open-air theatre; I can see everything that goes on on the stage, and hear everything that is said. I went to bed tonight before the show was half over. Educational films of great value may be had, but manufacturers of films say the people prefer the foolish melodramas with which you are all familiar in connection with moving-picture shows. Sometimes I fear that the general run of the people have wretchedly poor taste. The main show tonight was built around a woman tight-rope walker. This woman was a society queen, but her father met with reverses, and she became a tight-rope walker in a circus, refusing to marry a high-born and wealthy lover because of the change in her fortunes. The high-born and wealthy lover was entrusted with an important mission; to carry certain valuable papers, and a girl clerk of an opposition concern was employed to follow him and secure the papers. The girl clerk fell in love with the man, and refused to rob him, but became a fury when he met his former sweetheart, the tight-rope walker, in a circus. The girl clerk caused the high-born man to be kidnapped, and locked in a top room in a fourteen-story building, but the tight-rope walker rescued him by rigging up a rope to the building opposite, and carrying him on her back. It was an idiotic performance an hour and a half long, but the people in the audience greatly enjoyed it.... My friend, the Boer lawyer, says the Orange Free State is much more prosperous now than before the war, although for two years afterwards it seemed hopelessly wrecked. But the British government loaned the people money, and they soon recovered. The Boer lawyer made another statement that surprised me; he said that taxes are lower now than when the Orange Free State was a republic, and that every citizen has as many liberties as he had then, and more opportunities to prosper. This is rather an unusual statement for a captured subject of a republic to make about a government headed by a king.... I never knew until the Boer lawyer told me that a good many Boers—possibly forty—have been given titles by the English king. The chief justice of the South-African supreme court, which meets at Bloemfontein, is a “Lord,” and there are many inferior titles, such as “Sir.”... The negroes of Bloemfontein are compelled to live in what the English call “locations;” that is, in villages where there are no whites. We visited one of these today, and found the blacks had all kinds of shops, restaurants, hotels, etc. In front of one of the grocery stores was about the biggest pile of watermelons I have ever seen.... The vegetable market of Bloemfontein is in the public square of the town, and the vegetables are hauled in with ox teams. Negro women pick up the droppings of the cattle, and take the stuff home in baskets and pans carried on their heads. Reaching home, they plaster it against the sides of their houses to dry, and afterwards use it for fuel. Every negro woman I saw engaged in this unusual occupation carried a baby on her back. The negroes breed like rabbits, but the infant mortality among them is large.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18.—This morning at 9 o’clock we left Bloemfontein by train for Kimberley. The hotel porter carried our baggage into a compartment for four, and said:

“You are to have this to yourselves all day. I have arranged it.”

I thought it was simply the talk of a somewhat fresh but obliging hotel porter; but he didn’t do a thing but deliver the goods. And, what is more, the train conductor frequently came into our compartment, and pointed out the sights of interest.... I have known railroad men all my life, and been familiar with their practice of buying butter and eggs on the line, where they are cheaper, and carrying them home. The railroad men of South Africa do the same thing; the conductor told me that he buys eggs along the line at thirty cents a dozen when they are frequently 75 cents at the division point where he lives. He also buys his meat out in the country; a dressed sheep weighing eighty pounds costs him $4.80, so that he gets his meat at six cents a pound. Sometimes potatoes sell in South Africa at $11.50 for a sack of 165 pounds, and poor people pay three cents for every potato they buy in small quantities. On this run the conductor makes a round trip of 210 miles a day, which occupies him eleven hours. He says he earns about $120 a month, but in order to do this, he is compelled to get in forty days in a month. The engineer makes $5 for a day’s work of eleven hours.... On the way we passed a flock of thirty or forty ostriches grazing in a field, like cattle, but this isn’t considered a very good ostrich country. We also passed through the Paardeburg battle-field, on the Modder river, where General Cronje surrendered 4,000 men to a superior force of British. There are two cemeteries on the field, in which are buried the English and Boer soldiers who were killed in the battle. The Modder river battle-field does not look unlike the Custer battle-field on the Little Big Horn river in Montana. Indeed, the country between Bloemfontein and Kimberley does not look unlike the dry country in Montana.... We saw almost no cultivated fields on the way, but a great many cattle, and a few sheep. There is not a town between Bloemfontein and Kimberley: it is a frontier country, and the railroad has been in operation only four or five years. A man I met on the train says that in his section of the Orange Free State the soil is black and rich, and that fine crops of corn are raised; but I have seen no such country. He lives in a country town of 800 people, off the railroad, and says he pays only fourteen cents a pound for the best beef, while butter sells at 24 cents, and eggs at from 18 to 30 cents. In his country, the Boer women do their own cooking, but hire negroes to wait on them, and do the rough work. An ordinary negro house servant receives $4 a month; a particularly good one, $1.25 per week.... Kimberley, as you approach it by railroad, looks like Johannesburg, though it is much smaller. You see the same mountains around the mines, but at Kimberley the mountains are composed of blue mud that has been taken from the mines, washed for diamonds, and then piled up in waste heaps. The country is not unlike that around Johannesburg: large hills in every direction, and a rolling desolate country between them. Kimberley has warmer weather than Johannesburg, and we struck it on a tremendously hot day.... The first thing you notice at Kimberley is the great number of mulattoes, whereas there are almost none at Johannesburg or Durban.... I was told at Johannesburg that the hotels at Kimberley were abominable; they were so generally abused that I hoped to find them better than their reputation, but the Royal Palace, which I was told was the best, is the worst hotel I have ever patronized. And in an advertisement, I read that the Royal Palace was the “Hotel de luxe” of Kimberley. I am writing this in my room by the light of a tallow candle, as the electric light refuses to work. The hall servants (negro women) are the most slovenly creatures I have ever seen, and there does not seem to be any head to the place; I don’t know who runs it, but whoever he is, he doesn’t give much time to his job.... There are probably a half-dozen really excellent hotels at Bloemfontein; some of them only half patronized. Will some one please tell me why one of the good hotels at Bloemfontein, an insignificant country town, was not built at busy, hustling, prosperous Kimberley?... Johannesburg is a modern, beautiful city; Kimberley is a mining camp, with narrow, irregular streets. It has many good shops, but many of the people said to me:

“No one lives in Kimberley because he likes the town; we only remain here to make money.”

Johannesburg people are proud of their town, and they have reason to be, but Kimberley people are always apologetic. The population is thirty thousand, a large number of the inhabitants being negroes and Hindus. The rich mine-owners have race-tracks, clubs and resorts, but cannot be very comfortable, owing to the dust and the heat. The few Americans I have seen here are tanned until they are as brown as Indians, and they do not say much in praise of the town except that it is the greatest diamond camp in existence.